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Dear Fam,It’s now been two weeks since I returned to Ft Eustis and life is going pretty well. Our schedule picked up fairly quickly, we moved into a more exciting and more challenging block of instruction at school and we just had a four day weekend for MLK day.(Or Jackson-Lee-King day down here in the South).
The first couple of days were not fun. We showed up on Monday night and had a very long, drawn-out formation in the cold for no apparent reason. After that we went to bed until about 0400 when we were woken up for a company-wide drug test. So, we all drank a ton of water, then hopped in line. 6 hours later, at 1005, I was finished. There were still even more people behind me. Breakfast had closed about half an hour before so I didn’t eat that morning either. The rest of the day was devoted to cleaning. The cadre were busy doing other stuff so we didn’t have anything we were required to do but we were red-passed so there wasn’t anything we were allowed to do either. We had been red-passed because the barracks supposedly weren’t clean enough when we left although it was fairly obvious that it was simply a way to reestablish dominance after the break. So we spent the rest of that day cleaning.
One interesting anecdote from that day ended in a guy getting kicked out. On Monday, only a few hours after we got back, one soldier who is actually not a citizen (he’s from Holland) started complaining that he was having family problems. He then went to take out the trash and disappeared. He didn’t resurface until Wednesday after they found him at a motel down the road. We never heard what happened to him but he did take his bags and get in a taxi Thursday morning and we haven’t seen him since so we assume he was booted. I’d imagine he was easier to kick out too because of being from Holland.When I had arrived at Ft. Eustis I realized that I had forgotten my keys so I was unable to get into my locker or my toolbox. So I called home and my family put them in the mail and rushed them up to me. That night however they announced that we had to turn in our linens for washing in the morning. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal but my linens were all in my locker as we had been instructed to do before the break. So I went to the only sergeant on duty (a man no one likes because he’s unreasonable and mean-spirited even when we’re doing the right thing) and I told him my predicament. Despite knowing that my keys would be coming the next day he told me he’d have to cut my lock off my locker anyways and went downstairs to get the bolt cutters. After a couple hours waiting for him to return with the bolt cutters I went down to his office. When I got there he was playing with a bag of trash and was mad that I had come down. He had completely forgotten but did eventually come up. So, about midnight, I get my lock cut off my locker.
The next morning, our formation was ridiculous. The 15R class was being retarded as always and massively slowed us down from starting linen turn in. Then once we did start the sergeants took forever to get the process moving and did it in a very inefficient manner. So, linen turn-in involved about an hour and a half of standing around, and I’d be surprised if I found out it was as warm as 20 degrees at that time. Then we did our typical hour of PT, went to breakfast, and went back into the barracks. Because they wanted us to continue cleaning and we were still red passed I was unable to go down to the PX and get a new lock so when I left for school my locker was unlocked. And my keys did end up showing up in the mail that afternoon before we marched off to school as expected. Right before we marched off to school we got smoked for being too slow during linen turn in that morning. When I returned from school that night I found the sergeants had tossed my wall-locker for being unsecured. Everything was unfolded/unrolled and thrown all over the room. After about two hours of cleaning that up I got to bed between 3 and 4am. Luckily before PT the next morning I found someone who had a spare lock that they had forgotten to mention and I was able to lock my locker.After that things got better. We still had to do nothing but clean when we weren’t at school but there was less retarded stuff going on in general and school was pretty good. We were going over fairly boring systems but they at least made sense and we were getting them out of the way which was good.
Saturday we had an inspection. It started with re-stripping our beds and taking an inventory of our linen. So we stood in formation for another hour or so as they went through and checked all of our linen. Then, we skipped breakfast and went upstairs to stand in the hallway while 1SG checked our rooms, lockers, etc. After about 4 hours they took a break so 1SG could go eat. We were required to stay in the barracks. An hour and a half later they resumed the inspection. Another 2 hours passed and he had just reached my floor. At this point the CSM showed up. Apparently he had come by about 7 hours before after getting reports that there was no activity over at Alpha Company and had asked what was going on. When he returned 7 hours later and we were all still standing in the hallway and the inspection was only 75% done he was not happy. He called the 1SG down to his office and reamed him out for close to an hour. It was loud enough that CQ could hear it and though we were still waiting around we were happy to wait around because the reports we got from CQ were great. Apparently our 1SG was already in hot water with the CSM. That was compounded the day we left due to an incident that happened after I had already left Ft. Eustis. They lost track of a soldier at about 2am due to a mistake they made on their paperwork. He was still up in his room when they thought he was supposed to be on a bus. Instead of sending someone up to his room or making an announcement over the PA, they emptied the entire barracks. They had the whole company standing in formation for over an hour even after they found him (no one knows why). When this happened, not only was it 0200, it was below 20 degrees outside and snowing (this happened during that big storm that hammered DC that was all over the news). Apparently, every other company was reinstated to their pass-status within a couple days of returning. Our barracks was also the cleanest in the battalion when we left (according to the battalion CSM who was chewing out or 1SG) and when the CSM returned that day they were still the cleanest in the battalion. The CSM told our 1SG that we should have been reinstated to our pass status as soon as we got back. Our 1SG protested saying that we didn’t deserve that because we do this and that and before he even finished his sentence the CSM cut him off and threw it back on him saying he couldn’t expect us to do everything when he pulls stuff like that. He then told him that if we weren’t on pass within the hour or if anything like that happened again he’d make sure he was fired. It was pretty awesome. When they called us out to formation and released us they of course acted like nothing had happened but stuff like that travels far too quickly for us to possibly not have known.The next week went much better of course. It’s still the Army and I’m still in TRADOC but they’ve chilled out a bit which is nice. We all love the CSM now.
I ended up having a PT test on Wednesday morning. I wasn’t super happy with it but I did pass. Both my pushups and sit-ups dropped but I did manage a 13:48 two-mile. I was pretty surprised with that since we rarely get good runs in for PT and I had eaten pretty badly over break thanks to Brianna’s baking binge.
We also had a test in the hangar that day. It went pretty well and I was able to widen the gap between the guy who’s 2nd in the class and myself which was good.
Other than that the second week was pretty standard. We started learning about the TADS/PNVS system which is really cool. That stands for Target Acquisition Designation System/Pilot Night Vision System and is the big thing on the front of the aircraft that allows the pilot and CPG to fight in the dark and see far away. It’s pretty complicated and very cool.After that we had the four-day which was great and is covered by my dad’s blog since they were able to come up and see VA with me! Thanks again for doing that; it was a ton of fun.
I hope all is well at home. Good luck with everything in your lives. I love you guys.
